Women
in Gaza
By
Nahda Sh'hada
It
wouldn't be fair to repeat the argument which accuses the women's movement
of being the sole paralyzed social movement in the current circumstances.
If this is a correct observation, it pinpoints the crisis of all
social movements in Palestine, from the largest to the smallest, beginning
with the historical political parties, through the trade unions, and
extending to the newly formed, delicate civil society organizations!
The
new Intifada has revealed in such a painful way how poor we, who once believed
in people power, have become in terms of our approaches and activities.
Thus, we still have too far to go before we can achieve the first
steps in building a new popular social movement qualified to confront our
abandoned regimes. And if I may, I would apply this observation to the
Arab popular movements as
well.
You
might be watching TV and seeing what everybody else is seeing. The two
main scenes on the screen
are either our children who are full of life, anger
and blood, or the politicians who are defending their political purposes
and preparing for the coming season.
I
feel so angry when I watch those flowers: our children. We carried
them in our wombs, we fed
them with our blood and tears, we laughed with them, at them
and for them. We built our small houses, dreaming that they would be made
bigger by their laughter and noise.
We
dreamt that our children would look after us in our old age, knowing
that there would be no
welfare state to ensure our well-being.
Some of us built huge
castles in the air about their sons' future. What would he be like in the
coming years? What would his profession be? How many girlfriends would
he have?
And which neighbour would be the best bride for him? We might
have gone further and
thought about the expected mother-in-law and raised some reservations,
but we would then have reassured ourselves that this would be manageable,
we would find a way somehow.
One
mother informed me that a few days before her son's murder during the confrontation
in Khan Younis, she had found about his affair with a neighbour;
through some letters in his pocket and few flowers in his book. After
his death, she wanted to send them to his lover but eventually decided
not to do so, as this
might complicate the girl's life. The girl couldn't even
reveal her sorrow, as the affair was secret.
Women,
mothers, where could you hide your sadness? How would you bury your love
and dreams? How many dreams do you have to bury? Generation after generation
you have developed a culture of silence and acceptance which has never
been appreciated. And when an elegant queen tried her hand in politics,
she found no one to blame but you; you are the murderers of your children,
you have crossed all the borders and thrown your children onto the Israeli
streets to be killed. You did that because you want to see your children
on TV!
Some
women here started their theorization about the recent events by linking
the large number of youthful martyrs to the increased level of poverty
in camps and villages, and arrived at this conclusion: Most of our martyrs
come from the camps and villages, their class background reveals a high
poverty level, their family size is high with the average household being
around 12. Most of these
families live in a small single room which is
used for living, eating, cooking and sleeping. Therefore, children are
participating in the
Intifada because they have nothing to lose, their lives have
no meaning; children prefer a promised heaven to the hellish life on this
earth.
I
might agree to some extent with this analysis, but I am pretty sure
that these flowers were
at their peak, they were full of dreams. Who knows how many
dreams those children have? Who can describe what was going in their minds
when they were throwing the stones? How did they overcome all their fears
and go to their death? Why are they smiling like angels? How can I count
them? And when will we stop counting our martyrs?
Each
child was a gift for his parents; even with their poverty, mothers
used to put aside their
needs and hunger to fill the empty stomachs of their birds.
How can we express this? What language can reveal the mothers' pain? How
can we count their tears? How can we count the uncountable? He will
not quarrel with her any
more, she will not shout at him for not doing his homework.
His girlfriend will not receive his poetry. He has gone too early, he
has not even tried his first kiss.
Now,
what is the impact of the Intifada on women? I haven't done a survey about
it nor have an intention of doing so, but I am sure that having 4000-5000
wounded persons with their problems and disabilities would principally
affect the mothers' lives. The mother who used to send her son to
the nearest market to bring her bread or vegetables would find herself
nursing him, and this
might continue for several years. The bird who used to jump
everywhere around the house and be very noisy, which made her beg him to
be less active, is now paralyzed and she is praying to God to let him move
a single toe.
Previously,
with the 1996 closure, and when the unemployment rate reached its
highest peak, women tended to carry on their small, pitiful business because
the unemployed father could no longer provide an income. They used to
freeze vegetables or sew clothes and then sell them either directly to
the consumers or through
the merchants in order to feed the family, including
the man who was considered the subsistence provider of the family. Now,
with a disabled child, the mother would find herself suffering under the
24-hour presence of the unemployed frustrated father, taking care of
the household, nursing
the newly disabled child, and finding a way to retrieve a work.
Put aside the problem of water shortages and the electricity being cut
off daily. These women
can't be seen on the TV screen, the media comes to greet
them only when they are supposed to play the role of the martyr's or the
wounded person's mother. But after that, everybody forgets them
because the list is
pretty long and every day we have new problems to deal with.
Within
this context, you might find a stupid interviewer asking some women representatives:
what have women done to support men in the Intifada? What makes
his question more tragic is the representative's answer, telling him with
all her pride that we are doing everything to support our men. She
does not even protest
against the way the question was constructed, thanks to the movement's
failure to develop a discourse that clearly reflect women's roles and
pains.
What
makes me even more sick is the way some of the elite ride the wave. They
are talking as if they have really paid the same price. Here I
remember a friend's
story. At a public meeting he narrated a story which is very significant:
There
was once a Christian village where there were no Muslims. One day the Church
appointed a new priest to look after the religious needs of the villagers.
After a while, people started complaining about his behaviour. They
sent letters to the capital, pleading for him to be transferred, but
in vain. Then they raised
their voices and sent a delegation to Rome to discuss the
issue with the Pope. Here they also received a disappointing response.
After
several years, they felt unable to tolerate the priest any more; worse,
they felt that the top people in the main church had not paid enough attention
to their complaints. They called a meeting and discussed all sides of
the issue and finally they decided to go to the Islamic mufti in the nearby
village to convert to Islam.
All
the villagers went there, with great hopes that the Shaykh would be better
than their current priest. They reached the mufti's house, only to find
to their surprise that their priest had preceded them and changed his religion.
The mufti had nominated him as the Shaykh for the new converts.
Our
masters before Islam are our masters in Islam. Now back to the
Intifada. Our masters in
previous years are the same as those in the Intifada. Moreover,
they have changed their discourse to suit the new circumstances and
to secure their interests.
There
is a saying in Arabic; each period has its own leadership. However, the
current leadership has been leading us for more than 30 years,
although lots of water
has passed under the bridge. And the circumstances are worse for
women; our masters in all eras are the patriarchs who define every
part of our lives. At
times of crisis, women's conditions deteriorate drastically,
and now we are facing the question of articulating women's specific
problems.
Violence
is the main activity nowadays. It is highly encouraged by everybody because
it proves its eligibility and success in combating our enemy's extra use
of violence. How can a young man differentiate between interaction
with an enemy and
interaction at the social level? How can we maintain such a double
discourse, encouraging violence against our national enemy and simultaneously
disqualifying it as a practice to resolve social conflicts? Are
we able theoretically and politically to accomplish such a task? And
who would lead such a
mission?
I
really feel helpless in trying to answer these questions. I am pretty
sure that violence is
practised more frequently in the domestic sphere, given that
so many houses have been demolished and consequently so many families have
moved to live with their relatives. Moreover, the rise of unemployed men,
especially among the poor families, adds another problem.
Such
a situation raises the question of domestic violence and sexual abuse.
How can 15 to 20 people
live together in an extremely small space and maintain
healthy relationships within such a difficult environment? How would
men deal with this and how would women bear it?
Furthermore,
because the nationalist discourse is the prevalent one, no woman
can raise her voice about the abuse she faces whether sexual or not. Women
have to confront it silently, and those who are supposed to represent them
are either busy with other activities or fear the shame of discussing such
divisive subjects. I fully agree with the argument that asserts we
have to focus our efforts
on driving out the occupation. However, we have to remember
that while some of us are throwing stones at the occupier, social relations
based on power relations continue to have an impact on the most vulnerable
people. I have already met a martyr's widow whose children have been
taken away from her by her husband's family and she has been sent back
to her family's house.